Sunday, April 28, 2013

The neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party’s ongoing blood drives with donations earmarked only for Greeks pitted it against protesters outside a hospital in Tripoli in which a man who was photographing the event said he was attacked by the extremists.

Tensions rose on April 27 at the Panarkadiko Hospital of Tripoli, Peloponnese, when Golden Dawners ordered the cameraman to delete video footage recorded on his mobile phone, arguing that their faces should not be identifiable.

Labour unionists of PAME – the trade union affiliated with the Communist party KKE – had gathered outside the hospital protesting Golden Dawn and holding banners that read “Golden Dawn is the bosses’ sidekick and the system protects them.”

Greece's Parliament has approved an emergency omnibus bill that will ensure continued bailout funding by the country's creditors and pave the way for public sector layoffs.

The bill, which passed in a by 168-123 vote Sunday night, paves the way for the first civil service layoffs in more than a century. About 2,000 civil servants will be laid off by the end of May, with another 2,000 following by the end of the year and a further 11,500 by end-2014, for a total of 15,500.

Italy's awaited new government took office on Sunday amid hopes of urgent reforms against recession and fears of civil disorder, as two police officers and a passerby were shot and injured during what was supposed to be a day of celebration.

Enrico Letta, a prominent member of the center-left Democratic Party (PD), was sworn in as prime minister at the head of an unprecedented large coalition including the center-right and PD opponent People of Freedom (PdL) of former premier Silvio Berlusconi.

Letta and his 21 ministers swore to President Giorgio Napolitano, the first to be reelected in Italy's history and architect of what he called the "only government possible" to introduce immediate measures to tackle deepening crisis, signaling the end of two months of political stalemate.

The Conservatives derided the rival UK Independence Party as a "collection of clowns" on Sunday as they tried to stop supporters switching to the surging anti-European Union movement in local elections this week.

Thursday's vote in England and Wales offers parties a chance to test the political climate before a national election in 2015 at a time when Conservative strategists fear UKIP will split the centre-right vote.

Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives, the senior partner in a two-party national coalition, trail the opposition Labour party by up to 10 percentage points in opinion polls.

Concern has mounted in Hong Kong as neighboring Dongguan city in Guangdong started culling poultry after suspected H7N9 bird flu was detected in chicken for the first time.
In Beijing, Premier Li Keqiang visited a disease control center to stress the importance of preventive efforts.

The mainland reported 11 more people with H7N9 bird flu, bringing the total number of infections to date to 123, including 24 deaths.

The central province of Hunan confirmed its first case yesterday, while eastern Jiangxi reported three more for a total of five, and Fujian recorded its second case.

Li asked medics to stay on high alert as "this is a new virus, and we don't have all the information."

There is no evidence that the deadly H7N9 bird flu has yet spread between humans in China but health authorities must be ready for the virus to mutate at any time, a top US virologist has warned.

Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), said officials in China had studied more than 1,000 close contacts of confirmed cases and not found any evidence of human-to-human transmission.

"That is powerful evidence because if you had a thousand contacts with someone with the flu you would be pretty sure some of them would have been infected," Fauci said in an interview with AFP.

Nevertheless, Fauci cautioned that authorities needed to be ready for the possibility of the virus mutating and spreading between humans.

Tens of millions of U.S. dollars in cash were delivered by the CIA in suitcases, backpacks and plastic shopping bags to the office of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai for more than a decade, according to the New York Times, citing current and former advisers to the Afghan leader.

The so-called "ghost money" was meant to buy influence for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) but instead fuelled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington's exit strategy from Afghanistan, the newspaper quoted U.S. officials as saying.
"The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan", one American official said, "was the United States."

Machines with the ability to attack targets without any human intervention must be banned before they are developed for use on the battlefield, campaigners against "killer robots" urged on Tuesday.

The weapons, which could be ready for use within the next 20 years, would breach a moral and ethical boundary that should never be crossed, said Nobel Laureate Jody Williams, of the "Campaign To Stop Killer Robots".

"If war is reduced to weapons attacking without human beings in control, it is going to be civilians who are going to bear the brunt of warfare," said Williams, who won the 1997 peace prize for her work on banning landmines.

If you’re a man and have ever wanted to dress in women’s lingerie a firm has come up with the perfect product for you.

HommeMystere are hoping their new range of lingerie for males, which includes thongs and padded bras, will change the landscape of men’s underwear.

The Australian firm said their under garments include ‘comfortable men’s panties that really do fit, bra straps that don’t fall off the shoulder, teddies that don’t ride up halfway through the night and quality soft fabrics that feel great for all day wear’.

Israeli Air Force jets were reported flying over Damascus in the last few hours by foreign sources. According to debkafile’s Iranian and intelligence sources, Iran has been pushing Bashar Assad hard to let Hizballah have sophisticated weapons, including self-propelled SA-17 interceptor missile systems. Tehran is reminding the Syrian ruler of the debt he owes Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah who was ready to deploy 5,000 out of Hizballah’s 8,000 combat-ready fighters to Syrian battlefields to fight rebel forces and keep the Assad regime in power.

Assad is therefore in no position to spurn Tehran’s demand.

And so, preparations for sending those weapons systems across to Lebanon have been sighted in the last few days at Syrian military bases. Israeli Air Force are said to be overhead monitoring these movements after Israel repeatedly warned Damascus any attempts to make such transfers would draw a reaction.

On Jan. 30, Israel bombed a convoy passing through Jamraya near Damascus on its way to Lebanon with a consignment of sophisticated weapons systems for Hizballah.

The drone launched on April 25 from Lebanon, which Israeli fighter planes shot down opposite Haifa, is seen now as a counter-warning from Tehran that if Israel strikes another arms convoy on its way from Syria to Lebanon, the next drones flying over Israel would be armed and come in numbers.

At the risk of being abrasive, I am about to say something unthinkable, heretical. I am about to say six words you have likely never heard from a working member of the media, and may never hear again: Do not follow me on Twitter.

You can try, if so inclined. But unlike Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga, the pope, the Dalai Lama, and the Church of England (which invited Twitter users to help select the next archbishop of Canterbury), you won’t find me there. I’m not on it, and hope never to be. I say hope, because the clip at which the Twidiocracy has infiltrated itself into every crevice of society might leave me no choice. In the dystopian future—which in the age of Google glasses is starting to feel like the dystopian present—I might be forced to join Twitter in order to, say, collect my Social Security e-check when the time comes. Though the likelihood of there still being Social Security in 25 years is much less than the likelihood of people endlessly tweeting about how there’s no more Social Security.

If you’re not following this, there’s an outside chance you still have an analog life that unfolds beyond the glow of a screen. That you remember a time, not all that long ago, when the social-media contagion of FacebookTwitterPinterestInstagram hadn’t yet made us wonder how we used to talk to each other. A time when a phone was considered a communication device, not an extra limb. (A Stanford study found 75 percent of iPhone users fall asleep with their phones in their beds, only 2 percent less than the number of spouses who sleep with each other.) More likely, it just means you’ve been in a deep coma since Twitter’s birth in 2006. In which case, I envy you.

Video surveillance is big business. Expect it to get bigger. After law enforcement used closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras to help identify last week's Boston bombing suspects, lawmakers and surveillance advocates renewed calls for increased numbers of cameras nationwide.

"We need more cameras, and we need them now," ran a Slate headline.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) agrees. In an interview the day after the bombings with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell, he called for more video surveillance so that we can "stay ahead of the terrorists."

"So yes, I do favor more cameras," said King, who sits on the U.S. House Homeland Security and Intelligence committees and has also called for increased monitoring of Muslim Americans. "They're a great law enforcement method and device. And again, it keeps us ahead of the terrorists, who are constantly trying to kill us."

Law enforcement officials in New York are almost certain to oblige. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly wants to "increase significantly" the amount of surveillance equipment in Manhattan, which already has one of the country's most robust systems.

Iraq has suspended the licenses of satellite news network Al Jazeera and nine other channels, accusing them of inciting violence through their coverage of recent sectarian clashes.

The Communication and Media Commission (CMC) regulator criticized their reporting of violence triggered by a security forces raid on a Sunni Muslim protest camp in Hawija on Tuesday.

None of the channels was immediately available for comment.

More than 170 people have been killed in the fighting - the worst Iraq has seen since Sunnis started staging protests in December to complain about their treatment by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite-led government.

A core policy of a new anti-euro party was criticized as "economically insane" by German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble in an interview published on Sunday.

Support for the Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD), which wants Germany to quit the euro and reintroduce the deutsche mark, is at 2 percent, according to a survey by Emnid pollsters also released on Sunday.

"For Germany, it would be economically insane to exit the euro," Schaeuble told German weekly Focus, adding that Switzerland's struggle with its soaring franc proved how problematic it could be to have a stronger currency.

Schaeuble warned support for the AfD could still cost the ruling coalition crucial votes in September's elections.

Renowned feminist and former women's magazine editor Mary Thom was killed in a motorcycle crash over the weekend in Yonkers, New York, friends and colleagues said.

Thom, 68, a former editor of Ms. Magazine, crashed her motorcycle on the Saw Mill Parkway on Friday evening, said Eleanor Smeal, publisher of Ms. Magazine and a close friend of Thom.

An accomplished author, editor and journalist, Thom devoted her career to giving voice to women's rights issues in books, magazine columns and through her work within the women's movement, which mourned the loss over the weekend.

It is clear that the EU is making concrete plans to create a European army with little in the way of public discussion, despite the potential damage to NATO, claims UKIP MEP

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said recently that the European Union is not about peace, but about power. We know now that Blair was greatly in favour of waging war. In his first six years in office, Blair ordered British troops into battle five times. Indeed, more than any other prime minister in British history. It included wars in Iraq twice; Kosovo in 1999; Sierra Leone in 2000 and Afghanistan in 2001.

The Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, of which I am a member, on Tuesday voted in favour of a report authored by Elmar Brok and Roberto Gualtieri calling for, among other things, EU battle groups as well as a permanent military operational headquarters - in which every national delegation is to have a military attaché. All this is part of expanding the role and scope of the European External Action Service, which currently has a budget of €500m per year.

And of course, the report talked about economies of scale, downplaying national embassies and upsizing EEAS representations. There has been a lot of talk in the last month about growing German hegemony in Europe. Who can ignore German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in her Kalspreis speech, in Aachen on May 13, 2010 when she said: "We have a shared currency but no real economic or political union. This must change. If we were to achieve this, therein lies the opportunity of the crisis and beyond the economic, after the shared currency, we will perhaps dare to take further steps, for example for a European army."http://www.publicserviceeurope.com/article/3376/the-case-against-a-european-union-army-from-ukip

A shocking video has emerged that appears to show Egyptian police standing idly by as an anti-Christian mob launch a frenzied attack on a cathedral filled with mourners.

Two worshippers were left dead and 84 injured, including 11 police officers, as men shooting guns, wielding machetes and hurling stones laid siege to the walled Coptic cathedral compound in Cairo earlier this month.

Footage of the prolonged mass attack shows uniformed officers looking on and appearing to help one gunman take aim at people streaming out of a service held for five men killed in an earlier clash with Muslims.

The 9-year-old girl who got New Jersey's tough-guy governor to shed a tear as he comforted her after her home was destroyed is bummed because she now lives far from her best friend and has nowhere to hang her One Direction posters.

A New Jersey woman whose home was overtaken by mold still cries when she drives through the area. A New York City man whose home burned can't wait to build a new one.

Six months after Superstorm Sandy devastated the Jersey shore and New York City and pounded coastal areas of New England, the region is dealing with a slow and frustrating, yet often hopeful, recovery. Tens of thousands of people remain homeless. Housing, business, tourism and coastal protection all remain major issues with the summer vacation — and hurricane — seasons almost here again.

Bangs, Jay-Z and sideswipes at the media and his political foes helped Barack Obama win laughs at this year's White House Correspondents Dinner. The traditional send-up speech saw the President earn some laughs at his own expense but also land some funny blows against the media and the Republican Party. The President opened with a soft joke about his time in office but increasingly moved onto more controversial territory - even joking about 'burning books with Michelle Bachmann'.

Stephen Palmer, 28, (pictured right) was speeding when he lost control on a bend and crashed into Louise Clark's oncoming Audi TT, in Uxbridge, West London, in December last year. The collision left Miss Clark, 38, (pictured left) trapped inside her vehicle with broken legs and a serious brain injury. She was rushed to hospital by air ambulance but her life support machine was switched off more than a week after the smash on December 30 last year. Palmer was jailed for five-and-a-half years at Isleworth Crown Court yesterday

Athens - Greece on Friday announced plans to auction some of the country's state buildings online, as part of a privatisation drive required for the release of EU-IMF bailout loans.

The Hellenic asset development fund (HRADF) said its board had approved the procedure to create the necessary web-based platform and that the first e-auctions would begin on a test basis between July and September.

Authorities have confirmed bird flu virus at Pokharvindi in Rupandehi. The virus was detected at the Bhatapurhawa-based Laxmi Poultry Farm owned by Santa Kumar Yadav. More than 200 fowls and 50 kilograms of chicken feed were destroyed on Saturday following the confirmation of flu after samples of dead chicken tested positive, said Dr Laxman Dhakal, chief of the District Livestock Office, Bhairahawa. The lab test was carried out after 120 chickens died in the farm. Earlier, the bird flu virus was reported at Lakhanautiya VDC-based Sandip Poultry farm belonging to Dirganarayan Yadav. More than 4000 fowls were culled in the firm

Even as the mercury level steadily climbs, the city is reeling under twin attacks of chicken pox and measles. While hundreds have been affected by either of the two diseases, scores have been hit by both.

Though a large of number of the patients had been vaccinated, the immunization has apparently failed to work. Some doctors believe it is the usual seasonal occurrence, while some experts feel the outbreak has been triggered by poor ventilation in office buildings. Over the last two weeks, hospitals and clinics have reported a deluge of patients.

The city is reeling under the twin attacks of chicken pox and measles. Even as the mercury steadily climbs, hundreds have been affected by either of the two, scores by both. A large number of the patients had been vaccinated for the diseases but the immunization failed to work. Even though doctors believe it is the usual seasonal occurrence, some hospitals reported a deluge of patients over the last two weeks.

A tank containing diesel fuel has exploded during maintenance work at Marathon Detroit Refinery, forcing a mandatory evacuation order for a nearby area. One employee has been injured in the blast, authorities said.

Reports of the explosion and fire came in just before 6 pm local time.

Authorities on the ground say the explosion injured an employee. The incident occurred during a maintenance check.

Fatigued by years of austerity and swayed by promises of debt relief, Icelandic voters dumped the Social Democrats from power on Saturday, returning a center-right government that ruled over its stunning financial collapse just five years ago.

Once a European financial hub, this windswept north Atlantic island of glaciers, geysers and volcanoes has been limping along for years, still crippled from a crash that brought it to its knees in just a matter of days.

"We are offering a different road, a road to growth, protecting social security, better welfare and job creation," Independence Party leader Bjarni Benediktsson, the favorite to become the next prime minister after his party took first place in the vote, told Reuters as the results were coming in.

An Israeli aircraft hit a site belonging to Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip on Sunday in response to a rocket that militants fired from the territory into southern Israel, the Israeli military said.

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine said the air strike hit a training base belonging to the group in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip but nobody was hurt.

No militant group had initially taken responsibility for launching the rocket. It landed in an open field and did not cause damage or injuries, an Israeli military spokeswoman said.

A Mississippi martial arts instructor was charged on Saturday with attempting to use a biological weapon after a ricin-laced letter was sent to President Barack Obama earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

Everett Dutschke, 41, was arrested at his Tupelo home shortly after midnight by FBI agents following searches of the residence and a former business as part of the ricin letter investigation.

He was later charged with "developing ... and possessing" ricin and "attempting" to use it "as a weapon," according to a joint statement by the U.S. attorney for the northern district of Mississippi and the head of the FBI's Mississippi office.